Sunsail passed a landmark earlier this year as Richard Hurley became the 500,000th sailor that Sunsail has taken sailing. To mark the occasion, Sunsail invited Deloitte employee Mr Hurley to join them onboard one of its fleet of Match First 40s for a day’s racing during Cowes Week.

Mr Hurley was presented with a certificate by London 2012 Paralympic gold medalist and Sunsail ambassador Helena Lucas MBE, who is shortly heading out to Rio to defend her 2.4mR title at the 2016 Paralympics.

He also received a limited edition Crewsaver lifejacket, released to mark the Gosport-based company’s 30th anniversary, a bottle of Chilgrove gin, crafted in West Sussex, and a bottle of Tingrove fizz from the same county.

‘We were really pleased as a large number of us have learned to sail with Sunsail, cruised all over the world with Sunsail and obviously raced with them too,’ said Richard Hurley from the Deloitte Sailing Club. ‘We were really delighted with the gifts, and we’re going to raffle the lifejacket within the club.’

‘Our next Sunsail trip is just over a week’s time where we have 10 Sunsail boats for our club Autumn regatta where we will have a mixture of experienced crews and total novices.’

Sunsail has succeeded in getting an average of nearly 12,000 people onto the water in each of the 42 years since the company was founded in 1974 with a fleet of seven 25ft Snapdragons in Aegina, on the Saronic Gulf in Greece. Today the company runs over 500 yachts in some of the most beautiful sailing grounds in the world.